Soccer: Columbus Crew might land U.S. national team player

Friday

Aug 1, 2014 at 12:01 AMAug 1, 2014 at 9:50 AM

The Crew will use its top spot in Major League Soccer's allocation order, and likely soon. That was the message yesterday from coach Gregg Berhalter. With reports in recent days indicating that U.S. national team midfielders Jermaine Jones and Sacha Kljestan are set to return to MLS and sign with Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively, Berhalter said any such deals would have to pass through the Crew first.

Adam Jardy, The Columbus Dispatch

The Crew will use its top spot in Major League Soccer’s allocation order, and likely soon.

That was the message yesterday from coach Gregg Berhalter. With reports in recent days indicating that U.S. national team midfielders Jermaine Jones and Sacha Kljestan are set to return to MLS and sign with Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively, Berhalter said any such deals would have to pass through the Crew first.

And when presented with the possibility that other teams might see the Crew as unable or unwilling to use its top spot in the allocation order and therefore did not see it as a viable contender for certain players, Berhalter bristled.

“We can get anyone,” he said. “As long as ownership says ‘let’s do it,’ we can get anyone. We’re in the position. We play good enough football that anyone would want to come play with us. I think that spot is very valuable to us for that reason. To say that we’re just a placeholder in that, that’s not true.”

Berhalter said the Crew had been contacted on Wednesday on behalf of a prominent member of the U.S. national team.

“I don’t want to say names, but I got a call about a guy who wanted to specifically come to Columbus,” Berhalter said. “A big national-team player, and I thought that was interesting. All of a sudden we’re getting calls where people are coming to us.”

Sources have indicated to The Dispatch that the player is Kljestan, who plays for Anderlecht in Belgium. Asked whether the Crew has been in contact with Kljestan, Berhalter declined to comment and also did not specify whether the Crew was interested in the player who had approached the club.

Kljestan, 28, has made 46 appearances for the national team but began his career with Chivas USA, for whom he made 114 appearances from 2006 to ’10. He is a native of Anaheim, Calif. A message to his agent was not returned.

On Twitter, ESPN analyst Alexi Lalas suggested that midfielder Mix Diskerud could be the player who contacted the Crew.

MLS’ allocation order determines “which MLS club has first priority to acquire a U.S. National Team player who signs with MLS after playing abroad, or a former MLS player who returns to the League after having gone to a club abroad for a transfer fee,” according to the league’s official roster rules. That means the Crew would have first dibs on players such as Jones, Kljestan or Diskerud.

But there is a loophole: Teams can bypass the order by signing a national team player to a designated player contract at an undisclosed financial threshold determined by MLS.

The summer transfer window during which MLS clubs can sign players under contract in other leagues ends on Wednesday. Berhalter said last week that the Crew was down to a list of finalists and has said he is confident the Crew will sign someone before the window closes.

Two players who have been in deep discussions with the Crew are no longer in talks, sources toldThe Dispatch. One is from Sweden and the other from South or Central America.

“What we’re trying to do here is represent a club that players want to come to,” Berhalter said. “They want to play the type of soccer that we’re playing, they want to get treated the way we’re treating players, and that’s positive in my eyes. I think we’d be in contention for anyone coming back.”